


A Gift of Mercy

by simplyprologue



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Future Fic, UST, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 14:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not the ending she had imagined for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Gift of Mercy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [headtrip-honey](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=headtrip-honey).



> **A/N:** In it's original form, this was posted along with a graphic on my tumblr. This the edited and expanded version of that ficlet. Thanks to Emily (tumblr user headtrip-honey) for the beta! 
> 
> **TW:** Character death, non-graphic violence.

He awoke for the last time in the dead of the night, unsurprised to find her at his side. “A real wolf would finish a wounded animal.”

“I cannot,” she whispered.

His laugh was low, and choked with blood. “Make it your justice or your mercy, little bird. What I’ve done to you--my head should be on a block, not one of your _pillows_. Call one of your bloody guards, if you won’t. But I’m already dead, by your hands or the Lannister sword who put his blade through my guts.”

She had found him in the wake of battle--half alive, belly swollen with blood, skin ashen and slicked with sweat and snow. She ordered her maesters to make him live, had ordered him placed in fine chambers in her captured castle. And he dared to tell the Queen of Winter that he would die.

“But I know you keep a pretty dagger with you at all times.”

Her face of ice cracked and melted in the candlelight.

“I want you to live. You will live and swear your sword to me, take me home like you once promised--”

He laughed.

_I sang for mercy once, for you and for me. I wanted to save you._

“Call one of your swords, your grace.” His words were swift, but tight and pained.

“I will do it,” she replied immediately, sharp and defensive. Sansa regretted the words almost instantly, but she was a Queen, and Queens did not go back on their words. Her hand went to the dagger in her boot, a pretty enameled thing, a gift for her sixteenth nameday. Her voice softened. “ _I_ will do it.”

He laughed again, the sound swollen with the viscera of death. “Do you know where the heart is, little bird?”

“I do,” she answered, forcing her voice not to waver. “But... I have never killed a man before…”

Blood burbled up in a laugh to splatter his lips and chin. “And now you must swing the sword.”

“It will be mercy, not justice.” She wondered what he might have meant to her; what he did mean to her. His eyes dimmed, then, and watched her carefully. Sandor Clegane was no true knight, not a knight at all. And he had saved her. And this was not the ending she had imagined for them. “I only wanted to save you.”

A cough wracked his body; he was too weak to do anything but ride it out, pain fogging his eyes and his temper.

“You should have let me die.” He paused, and Sansa steeled her face. No tears would fall. Not for him, or her.

“I stood there in my white cloak and let them beat you. I took the song, you never gave it--I took it with my knife to your throat, stinking drunk. I would have done it, little bird. You need to do it, now.” A violent cough seized him again. Sansa tried to stroke his cheek, bestow a small amount of comfort, but he would not allow it. “Be done with it, little bird. I meant to give you mercy, before I knew what it was. I need you to give me mercy, the real mercy.”

His words were angry, but his voice was not--it was a rasping kind of tired, drifting near the finish. Sansa felt her eyes brim with tears, the crown resting too heavily upon her head for the child that she felt she was. “I couldn’t save you,” he spat bitterly. “You can’t save me.”

“Please,” she almost begged, but Queens did not beg. Her hand gripped the dagger tight. “Must you die so angrily?”

The Hound’s face softened at last. “No, little bird.”

“I only wanted to save you,” she whispered again, sadly. Climbing up onto the bed, she kneeled over him. He watched as she carefully placed two fingers to rest over his heart--it beat erratically against her palm.

“You did,” he said at last, voice weak but not soft at all.  

Her breath hitched, but Sansa did not falter. The blade slid like butter through his ribs. Blood soaked the linen of his bedclothes, and she knew it was done before looking at his face. The Hound was dead.

Shaking head to toe, Sansa felt her shoulders curl in. Trembling fingers pulled the dagger from him, and she set it carefully aside before letting a sob wrench itself from her throat, her wails beating back the howling wind and sheets of ice. She was a Queen, and Queens did not cry. At least not where people could see them—and Sandor Clegane was dead.

Forcing herself to calm, she leaned down over him and placed a tiny kiss at the corner of his mouth, before curling into his side. He was warm yet, and the night was so cold. Her fingers reached to trace his face, wet with blood and tears—

—and Sansa Stark began to sing for mercy once more.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
